A penny for your (unspoken) thoughts

Stanford's breakthrough new brain implant reads inner speech potentially freeing people 'locked in' by certain conditions. But could it come with a privacy price?

Speaking by thinking

If you’re like me, you are all too familiar with your inner voice. That often annoying, constant mental chatter narrating our thoughts, forming responses and composing the words we're about to say.

For most of us, this internal monologue stays private. But Stanford researchers might have just cracked the code on reading those unspoken thoughts.

Their new brain-computer interface can decode "inner speech", in real time, with 74% accuracy from a vocabulary of 125,000 words.

Published in Cell journal on 14 August, this isn't just impressive technology - it's potentially life-changing for people who've lost the ability to speak.

Unlocking the locked-in

Traditional brain interfaces require users to physically attempt speaking, which researcher Erin Kunz describes as "tiring and uncomfortable" for people with paralysis.

The Stanford study reads neural signals from microelectrodes implanted into the motor cortex of four people with severe movement disorders; three with ALS and one with brain stem stroke.

Inner speech produces weaker brain signals than attempted speech, but the patterns are distinct enough for artificial intelligence to interpret. The AI was initially trained on the patients attempts to physically say phonemes (the building blocks of words). Then on patients attempting full words.

But once it got up to speed it could move on to inner speech.

Eventually users simply thought words and watched them appear on screen in real-time.

For people with conditions like locked-in syndrome - where the mind remains sharp but the body can't respond - this could restore natural communication after years of painstaking alternatives like eye-blinking systems.

While the researchers acknowledge current technology can't perfectly decode spontaneous thoughts, as sensors and algorithms improve, that limitation may disappear.

Did someone say PreCog?

Here's where things get complicated. The device doesn't just read intended communication - it can pick up any thoughts that follow speech patterns.

During counting tasks, the system detected numbers participants were thinking but never meant to share.

This breakthrough forces us to confront an uncomfortable reality: we're entering an age of "brain transparency," as legal scholar Nita Farahany puts it.

The technology that could liberate people from communication barriers also threatens the last bastion of human privacy - our thoughts.

The Stanford team tackled this by borrowing the "wake word" concept from voice assistants like Alexa. Participants had to think "chitty chitty bang bang" to activate or deactivate the decoding system.

Thankfully the password recognition worked with over 98% accuracy.

Food for thought

This research represents more than a technological milestone. It is the opening chapter of a larger conversation about mental privacy in the fast approaching age of brain-computer interfaces.

As senior author Frank Willett notes, improved hardware will soon make these devices "fully implantable and wireless."

The potential to restore natural communication for people with paralysis is extraordinary.

But the researchers' proactive approach to privacy protection must be adopted as the basic standard for any work in this field.

In a world where thoughts can be decoded, the ability to keep them private becomes a fundamental human right.

I'd love to hear what you think about this tech breakthrough.

Share your thoughts number@adamspencer.com.au

Or perhaps ... I already know them? 🤷‍♂️

Adam S